The IV Momentum engine evaluates two interconnected metrics derived from a stock's 30-day forward-implied volatility (IV): its current absolute level and its single-session rate of change.
While 30-day IV reflects the options market's forward-looking expectation of annualized price dispersion, tracking daily IV momentum isolates shifts in market uncertainty, institutional hedging demand, and volatility pricing.
A fixed point change in implied volatility carries fundamentally different structural meaning depending on the baseline from which it originates:
Two points is a real jump at one level and a rounding error at the other, so the tool needs to know which one it is looking at.
Core analytical insight
A +2.0 point jump at a 15% IV baseline reflects a massive relative expansion (+13.33%) in option pricing. The exact same +2.0 point increase at a 90% IV baseline is a negligible move (+2.22%). Evaluating change without baseline context conflates fundamentally distinct market events.
Worked example: TSLA
Tesla's 30-day IV sits at 47.2%, an elevated volatility regime, and eased 0.8 points on the session from a prior level of 48.0%:
Percentage Change % = −0.8 / 48.0 × 100 = −1.67%
This reading describes a modest contraction within an already elevated volatility regime.
Rather than matching across a single variable, the IV Momentum engine applies a three-tiered sequential filter against a ticker's own historical record to construct a comparable sample.
The three filters run in order: direction first, then the IV level it happened at, then the size of the move within that level.
Breakdown of the matching protocol
Directional alignment: days with rising IV are matched exclusively against past sessions where IV rose. Contractions are matched strictly against contractions.
Regime proximity (baseline filter): isolates past sessions where the asset's IV baseline was in the same volatility regime. This prevents low-volatility behavior from being benchmarked against crisis-era IV spikes.
Magnitude percentile ranking: ranks the current IV point change against historical point changes within that specific volatility regime, retaining the closest matches relative to the ticker's own history.
Application example: TSLA
Applying this three-tiered filter to TSLA's 0.8 point easing at a 47.2% IV level produced 56 matched historical sessions:
Direction: limited to IV contractions.
Level: filtered for historical sessions where TSLA IV was near 47%.
Magnitude: today's 0.8 point shift ranked at the 38th percentile of that regime, a smaller-than-average easing for TSLA when trading near 47% IV.
Divergent volatility profiles
Two assets can experience the same daily point change on the same session while representing completely different structural setups:
Metric
Asset A
Asset B
Daily IV point change
+1.0 point
+1.0 point
Baseline 30-day IV
20.0%
95.0%
Relative volatility expansion
+5.00%
+1.05%
Matched-set result
Low-IV expansion sample
High-IV regime sample
Key takeaway
Because Asset A is expanding from a compressed baseline (20%) and Asset B is drifting within a hyper-volatile regime (95%), the engine builds completely independent historical samples for each asset, preventing false equivalence in forward projections.
Chapter 3
Price Projections
The engine projects across three fixed horizons: the next trading day, one week (5 trading days) and one month (21 trading days). Every card shows the exact future date it refers to, so there is no ambiguity about which session is being measured.
Three measures on each card
Green / red odds: the split between matched days that closed higher and those that closed lower over that horizon.
Avg green return: the average gain of only the matched days that closed higher.
Avg red return: the average loss of only the matched days that closed lower.
TSLA's read after a 0.8 point easing at an IV of 47%:
Horizon
Target date
Odds
Avg green
Avg red
Next day
23 July 2026
38% / 63%
+1.61%
−2.23%
One week
29 July 2026
45% / 55%
+5.72%
−5.56%
One month
21 August 2026
49% / 51%
+10.22%
−9.48%
Measured on TSLA, 22 July 2026, from 56 matched days.
These are returns on the stock, not on its volatility. The setup is defined by an IV move, but everything downstream measures what the share price did afterwards.
Always read the averages next to the odds
The two average rows are one-sided: avg green averages only the up outcomes, avg red only the down outcomes. Never read them by themselves.
The month row is nearly even. The odds tilt red at 51%, yet the average green (+10.22%) edges out the average red (−9.48%). Slightly more months closed lower, but the up moves were a shade larger. On a row this balanced, neither number alone tells you much; read them together.
Chapter 4
The Three Charts
One Chart View toggle, three ways of looking at the same sample of matched days: the Price Cone, the Bar Graph and the Chart Log.
1. Price Cone
The default. It projects forward 45 sessions from today's price, drawing the percentile bands of what the matched days actually did, converted into prices.
Median line (50th percentile): the central outcome of the sample, not a target.
Cone width (10th to 90th): how much the matched days disagreed. A narrow cone means consistent outcomes; a wide one means high variance.
2. Bar Graph
This asks a different question: how often did price travel a set distance, and how quickly? You choose the move size, and the chart answers in both directions at once. Green bars above the line show the share of matched days that rose that far within a given number of days; red bars below show the share that fell that far.
By Touch vs By Close
Setting
What counts
Use it for
By Touch
Any intraday high or low that reached the level, even if price came back before the close
Path risk: stop-loss triggers or intraday margin
By Close
Only a daily close beyond the level
Settlement risk: holding-period targets or trend sustainability
Touch numbers are always equal to or higher than close numbers. A wide gap between the two flags heavy intraday movement that did not hold into the close.
3. Chart Log and the event register
The Chart Log shows the full price chart with every matched day marked, so you can see the wider context each time the same setup appeared. Below it, the event register lists every matched day with its date, its IV level, the change on the day, and its forward return.
Any column sorts, which makes it easy to find the largest gains and worst drawdowns in the sample. Those extremes often matter more than the average when you are sizing a position.
The front page runs the same analysis across every ticker at once, so you can compare today's IV moves without opening them one at a time.
Every ticker has a reading
There is no trigger here. Every optionable stock has an IV level and a change every session, so every row carries a number. The question is never whether a ticker qualifies, only where its IV sits and what it just did.
The IV column
Third from the left, and the one to read first. It carries the level and the day's change together, so 47.2% (−0.8) tells you both halves of the setup in one cell. Sorting on it puts the market's most expensive options at the top.
Price Projections
The same price projections from Chapter 3 appear here: avg green, avg red, and the odds, shown for next day, next week and next month.
Each figure is calculated from that ticker's own matched days. The numbers are therefore not comparable side to side in the way they look. Two rows both showing 55% are each describing their own stock at its own IV level.
Every column sorts. Clicking the odds at any horizon is the quickest way to see which of today's IV moves have leaned green historically and which have not.